Aggression, and the naive image of a true believer

A chapter from the first part of the book - Christ's psyche of an
adopted child. Pages 76 - 80 of the book were translated by Svato Schützner

There is a thing that one could call a naive
image of a true believer. It is the image of a nice person, clearly developed from a
childish pre-pubertal idea of a ”good child”. Such good child is never annoying, acts
pleasantly toward everyone, has perfect self control, uses no bad words, is always a
delight to meet. We can well make fun of this basically primitive ideal but one has to
keep in mind that it is formative -- to many, it gives the strength to help others (e.g.
many religious sisters, although sticking to the model of exemplary little girl, manage to
be great help to hospital patients) -- and what is more important? It is a developmental
ideal. It corresponds to a definite, although not final, stage of moral maturing. Every
healthy individual has to go through this stage at some time or another. Some do get
further, some don’t, but in any case it means that if we criticize this ideal of a
”good boy” or ”nice little girl” we’d better ourselves be beyond the mere
loutish revolt that constitutes the next phase of moral development.

What is it that is wrong with this ideal? It
is an attempt to live according to a definite set of fixed-in-advance principles. Nothing
wrong with that, except that it is not a realizable ideal. Human life is not so
predictable that a few principles would suffice to solve all situations that might occur.
It is equally preset that an individual would get into situations that he can manage only
with a heightened effort. This effort takes sometimes the form of aggression; sometimes
the individual will be overwhelmed by emotions produced by the weight of extraordinary
tasks or losses.

In the case of Jesus’ aggressive third
phase, it isn’t difficult to guess what was the burden that resulted in his reacting in
a violent and for him unaccustomed manner: the sight of approaching and unavoidable death.
Christ knew the Scriptures, knew also what had been written about the Messiah, so he had
to come to peace with the idea that it was exactly he to whom this painful fate was
assigned. We have seen from the beginning that it wasn’t something that he would find
attractive. He tries at first mildly, then in a sharper way, but on all fronts he sees
that his effort to pass on even just a few elementary ideas strikes a wall of
uncomprehension, not just among his opponents but, what is worse, among his disciples. As
illustrated in the scene (Mk 9,30) where his disciples are on the way arguing which of
them is the greatest.

It isn’t easy to imagine the mind of
somebody tormented by the realization that his end is impending and who at the same time
sees that his disciples are totally off, not understanding at all the most elementary
bases of his message. Except for cases of deepest depression, unbearable pains, reactions
to acute stress or similar pathological states, human beings do not desire death, rather
they find the prospect of it frightening. It was so no doubt also in the case we mentioned
before, with the fig tree and Christ’s reaction in the moment.

The question might occur to you why, if it
was so, didn’t his disciples put it into context and describe it somewhat closer. Here,
as elsewhere, one has to keep in mind that what we have about Christ is only mediated
reports. Mediated by other men to such extent as those men were able to understand
Christ’s mind. We may illustrate this on how children report the behaviors of grownups.
A child isn’t able to comprehend the world and the thinking of adults; its description
of what happened cannot reach beyond the level of existing psychological development. It
was no different in the case of the gospel writers and apostles.

After their experience with Christ’s
resurrected they advanced by a giant step, yet still they did not reach his level. And of
course they did not become psychologists, didn’t know about the developmental stages of
coping with a heavy loss, so they could not identify it retrospectively when describing
Christ’s behavior. They put on record the symptoms but without noticing what preceded or
what followed, how the things the had observed were connected. In a similar way the
children when they grow up cannot quite reconstruct and identify what was going on in the
minds of their parents when the parents were going through their crises. As grownups they
might even have sufficient empathy, but they lack the needed recollections -- as children
they had not registered sundry relevant details, and did not store them in their memory.

The above may look to you like fancy
psychologizing, but it is interesting that Christ took it into account (J 16,12.13):
"I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the
Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his
own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to
come.” This hangs also together with Christ’s further conscious plan: to put his
teaching entirely into the hands of the disciples, however weak, limited or bigmouthed
they may be. Christ needed his disciples to start thinking in his ways but saw them
instead dragging after him like steam behind the pot. This was true of his followers both
remote and close. He reproaches the anonymous crowds that they are following him for
selfish reasons (J 6,26): ”Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek me, not because you saw
signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled.” And the close disciples he
warns that their bigmouthed total dedication is merely an illusion they themselves would
like to believe true (Mk 14,27sq):

Jesus said to them, "You will all
fall away, because it is written, `I will strike down the shepherd, and the sheep shall be
scattered.' But after I have been raised, I will go ahead of you to Galilee."

But Peter said to him, "Even though
all may fall away, yet I will not."

And Jesus said to him, "Truly I say
to you, that this very night, before a rooster crows twice, you yourself will deny me
three times."

But Peter kept saying insistently,
"Even if I have to die with you, I will not deny you!" And they all were saying
the same thing also.

Here we find one of the main reasons why
Christ himself had to accept, step wise, the idea of inevitable death. If he didn’t die,
his disciples would never get out of their present phase of development -- mindless
follower of a great master. He even found a parable for it (J 12,24): ”Truly, truly I
say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but
if it dies, it bears much fruit. He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life
in this world will keep it to life eternal.”

Presence of aggressive impulses is attested
also in the previously mentioned curse on the fig tree and in the associated expulsion of
the sellers from the Gentiles’ Court. The instructions he gave about the swords, shortly
before death, confirm the presence of fantasies about a violent solution to what was about
to happen (Lk 22,35sq):

He said to them, "When I sent you
out without money belt and bag and sandals, you did not lack anything, did you?" They
said, "No, nothing."

And He said to them, "But now,
whoever has a money belt is to take it along, likewise also a bag, and whoever has no
sword is to sell his coat and buy one. For I tell you that this which is written must be
fulfilled in me, ‘He was numbered with transgressors'. For that which refers to me is
reaching its fulfillment."

They said, "Lord, look, here are two
swords."

And He said to them, "It is
enough."

We may feel in the background a thought
somewhat like this: ”If I am to be numbered with criminals, couldn’t I defend myself
with sword in my hand, like an insurgent or a sicarius?” (The sicarii of the time were
killing with their daggers the Jews who collaborated with the Romans.)

To present Jesus as a man totally lacking
aggression does violence to his human nature. The right sort of man is not a man without
aggression; it is a man who has his aggression under control. Here belongs e.g. his
refusal to call down fire on the village in Samaria that throw him out, along with the
disciples, apparently in a rather humiliating manner (Lk 9,54-56):

When his disciples James and John saw
this, they said, "Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and
consume them?"

But he turned and rebuked them: "You
do not know what kind of spirit you are of. The Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s
lives, but to save them." And they went on to another village.

Of interest here is also the change in Jesus
from before to after his prayer at Gethsemane. Before, he suggests to the disciples to
take along swords. After the prayer, we hear something quite different (Lk 22,49-51 and Mt
26,52-54):

When those who were around Him saw what
was going to happen, they said, "Lord, shall we strike with the sword?" And one
of them struck the slave of the high priest and cut off his right ear.

But Jesus answered and said, "Stop!
No more of this." And He touched his ear and healed him.

Jesus said to him [to the disciple]:
"Put your sword back into its place; all those who take up sword shall perish by the
sword. Or do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he would at once put at my
disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how then will the Scriptures be
fulfilled, that it must happen this way?"

Something similar, then, is true about
aggression as about miracles. Just as Christ progressively realized that extraordinary
powers were practically useless, that they did not convince the Jews about his mission, so
he came to understand that violent solutions, either, wouldn’t lead to the goal he
intended. Everybody who wants to consider himself Christian has to go through these two
processes. It is not just the matter of rejecting aggression, one has also to free oneself
of pointless desire for a miraculous omnipotence.

The goal is to make use of, and in the case
of aggression, even to overcome one’s natural tendencies and abilities, such as the
nature of each one of us has given us. The point is not to turn into an angelic superman,
to have supernatural powers, not either to lose one’s ego, to cease being oneself or to
dissolve one’s identity. Christians aim at a perfect, i.e. saint human being, not to
metamorphose into a different being. Each seeks and continues shaping himself with those
givens that had been allotted to him. In this we follow our Lord, who himself was seeking,
in complex ways, his identity of God’ son, and who had a lot that was by no means easy
or enviable.